Psychic Determinism and Freedom of will

In spite of all the effort that has been spent in attempting its elucidation, 'free will' continues to be a puzzle for both philosophy and science. The concept of freedom of will is based on the belief that reasoning adults can choose to act in accordance with the dictates of principle and need not have behaviour exclusively determined by impulse or need. We psychoanalysts are often sought out by people who believe themselves to be significantly deprived in this respect. Our patients may be aware that they should change their behaviour, but find themselves unable to implement their seemingly well-meant resolutions to do so, even though that failure may bring them into difficulties. In spite of the recognition that their actions or inactions generate or compound their unhappiness, they seem unable to behave differently than they do.

We know from the application of the psychoanalytic method that the reconstruction, interpretation and working through of the transference in a psychoanalysis usually does promote both the feeling of freedom of choice and its implementation in critical areas of behaviour. As Freud (1923a) put it, analysis sets out 'to give the patient's ego freedom to decide one way or the other' (p. 50; italics original).

Stephen Toulmin (1974), a leading philosopher of science, has suggested that our clinical experience puts us into the position, perhaps uniquely so, of making a significant contribution to the understanding of the concept of 'free will'. However, there is some question among psychoanalysts whether or not the experience of free choice is an illusory one. How can psychoanalysis, committed to the principle of psychic determinism, be instrumental in promoting free will? Are these two not contradictory, so that the postulation of the one rules out the other? Freud (1915–16) himself seems to have precluded the possibility of freedom of will in an earlier statement where he said: 'you nourish a deeply rooted faith in undetermined psychi